The last sound of the ocean
by butterflymind
Summary: Spike's life, as his Father sees it.


That first day, he had his speech so well prepared he was almost halfway through it before Spike could interrupt. When his son had finally dragged himself home at God knows what hour he looked so dazed he had just assumed he had been kicked out of school at last, the threat having loomed over his head for weeks. There had been a flicker at the back of his mind then, a ghost of recognition of his son's expression but he had dismissed it, too angry with him to care. When Spike did finally get a word in edgeways he noticed vaguely that his tone was different, slightly dreamy and that his eyes drifted away even as he looked at him.

"I've not been kicked out Dad. I joined the stupid paper." He almost started with surprise at that. Two days ago Spike had seemed far too gone to care about the lifeline the school had thrown him. He wondered if the 'discussion' they had been through the night before had had an effect but he didn't really believe it. He had the feeling of a missing story, but Spike had crawled into bed by the time he thought to ask.

He hadn't found out what it was, not for a long while. In the meantime he felt as if he was living with a different person, at least that was how he described it later. If he was honest, it was more the strangeness of finding out there was someone else living there at all, that Spike was home some nights was a surprise, that they could have a half civil conversation when neither of them was pleasantly wasted was a revelation. He went to his first parent-teacher night at the school to be told that his son was an almost reformed character and that the effect of some kids' paper was dramatic. The deputy head had given him a knowing look and he had returned it, convinced he was supposed to be sharing some private joke he was not aware of. They had told him Spike might get some of his A-levels and he had nodded and smiled, still not really believing it.

Perhaps it was the change in Spike that had led to his decision; perhaps it was just the healing powers of time. Either way he began to feel tired whenever he looked out of the window, immeasurably weary of England, of the life he had been living for the past ten years. He had spent a decade waiting for Katherine to make up her mind he realised, almost a quarter of his life watching he drift back and forth between her life and theirs. At first he had thought he was a coward for not chasing her hard enough, now he knew who the coward was. It should have been a relief when she had left for the last time he realised now, instead it had driven him into a depression so deep it had farmed his son out to his grandparents and left him to sit in a chair and wonder, sometimes for weeks on end, what it was he had done to make her leave him. With Spike he had become angry in his grief and because they were too alike for comfort Spike had fought him at every step, every turn. Three years they had spent doing nothing but fighting, rats trapped together on a sinking ship. They should never have stayed in England, he knew that now. But as soon as Spike was finished they would go back he decided, start over again where they belonged.

He had meant to broach the subject of the move with his son that morning but Spike had awoken so keyed up, bouncing off the walls in nervous excitement. He remembered him mentioning a party; something newspaper related that meant he'd had to borrow a suit. To be honest at the time he hadn't really been listening, his brain already buzzing with his own revelation. Now he left the conversation alone, knowing Spike would barely listen to what he was saying. The next day he was too busy, the third day they didn't see each other. When the fourth day came Spike had come in from school and disappeared up the stairs before he could open his mouth to speak. Spike was still upstairs an hour later when the doorbell rang and he had struggled out of his chair to answer it. He had reached the door just as Spike had thundered to the bottom of the stairs and he had seen, just for a second, a look of panic flicker over is son's face as he had opened it. The girl on the other side was not what he expected his son to bring home. She wasn't tall enough for a start. Or flashy enough. The eyes that regarded him were cool in their appraisal; she could almost convey sarcasm in a look. The shiver began somewhere in his spine even as he stood aside to let her in. The recognition of the look, of the manner was a shock so hard it was almost painful, followed by the dull thud in his head as the pieces fell into place.

"Dad, this is Lynda." Spike sounded awkward, embarrassed even and he knew he wasn't helping by staring stupidly between them. Spike grabbed his jacket and slung a proprietary arm around the girl's shoulders, as he had seen him do to a thousand girls. "Let's go." He said but the girl shrugged his arm away and turned back.

"Nice to meet you." She said it quickly, almost shyly and the momentary flash of Katherine he had seen was gone. Spike tugged insistently on her hand and they left, her voice berating Spike in a tone that cut through him. The understanding was dawning with a heavy inevitability, the dreaming, the improvements and the sense of purpose that had enveloped his son. He wondered why he hadn't seen it coming sooner and as he sunk heavily back into his chair, feeling suddenly old, he prayed for an impossible happy ending.

If anything his determination to return to the States strengthened from that moment. But he knew better than to force Spike, so he left the question open ended, hoping against hope that it would burn itself out in time to let Spike use the escape he had provided. He saw very little of Lynda, Spike strove to keep them apart in a way that under any other circumstances he would have found insulting. The way things were he felt almost relieved, on the rare occasions they were left together her every move and mannerism, the way she spoke and the things she said were painful to him. A rational part of his mind asked him whether or not he was over fitting the parallel, but his gut instinct still recoiled with the fear of a wounded animal when she was near him. He heard the midnight phone calls, saw the enraptured expression on his face when he watched her. He remembered.

They didn't speak for the entire plane journey. Spike stared out of the window for most of it, his reflection hovering between anger and tears. He had tried at first to sleep, and then he had resorted to watching his son. He wanted so badly to console him, to use some of those clichéd phrases he had heard a thousand times from other parents. He had never mastered fatherhood and now it was too late to start, besides which he could not quiet the voice in his head that murmured about lucky escapes. When they finally reached L.A they maintained the same silence for days, Spike alternately restless and angry or withdrawn and depressed. Eventually they began to talk to each other briefly, functionally and much as it had been in England. Finally after two months Spike began to seek out friends and after three he brought a girl home with him. She was pretty, perhaps not too bright, but he found it a relief to be able to sit in a room with his son's girlfriend without wincing. He had just begun to think they would pass through this unscathed when Spike announced that he was taking Zoë to England, to meet his grandparents and see the sights. She seemed so excited, her eyes gleaming as she gripped Spike's arm. All he could feel when he looked into his son's eyes was a creeping dread. It had all exploded the night before Spike left, he had bitten down on it for so long that the final blast was earth-shattering.

"You're going to see _her_ aren't you?"

"See who Dad?" Spike's voice had an edge.

"That girl. Lynda. The one you were with before…" He had been stopped by Spike's laugh, bitter and hard.

"Trust me; Lynda is the last person I'll be seeing." He sounded so certain, so arrogant even, that before he knew what he was doing he had stepped up to his son, jabbing his finger at him.

"You will. Even if you don't want to you will. You can't resist it. You're just like me Spike, too weak." Spike had grown very quiet with that and for a moment the silence hung in the air.

"I'm not just like you." His voice began calmly but kept rising. "I'm not anything like you. I don't need some dream to chase after because I can't cope with the real world. I'm not going to follow her around and wait for her to come back like you did. I don't need her. I don't need you. I don't need my deadbeat father and I don't need Lynda Day!"

They did not speak again until long after Spike had arrived in England. When his son had failed to return he hadn't been surprised. When a distraught Zoë had turned up at his house and told him the rest of the story he had almost felt a grudging admiration. Katherine had never actually stolen his passport, although he wondered briefly if there was some common insanity to English women. For the next few months he talked to Spike on the phone now and then, kept the subjects neutral and listened with only half an ear for a familiar voice in the background. When Spike began writing for the paper again he got copies sent over, wondering vaguely why he still kept his paternal pride a secret. Zoë had proved far more persistent than he had ever given her credit for, he had assumed she would just lose interest but instead she became consumed by the idea, going so far as to return to England to bring Spike home. He had been amazed they had got as far as the plane before something went wrong. To this day Spike had never told him what had happened, Zoë had turned up one week later to collect the things she had left in the house and had spared him barely a word. Spike had been at work at the time, deliberately probably, but she had left with her possessions and her dignity intact and he had no intention of ruining that for her just to satisfy his curiosity. Any repair he had ever made to his relationship with his son was falling apart, cracks sneaking across the thin veneer of civility they now lived under. They barely spoke except to argue, but Spike spent so much time away from the house that even those arguments were becoming a rare occurrence. He had begun to wonder where his son was running to when he came home early one day to find two suitcases in the hall and Spike standing by them looking sheepish and defiant.

"Where are you going?" He didn't really know why he bothered asking.

"Home." He sighed, appreciating the irony of that statement.

"You spend years trying to get back to the States, now you want to go back to England?" He was aware his voice was getting louder and he saw a look tinged with relief in his son's eyes, the pattern of their arguments was comforting in its familiarity.

"Better there than here. Face it Dad, we'd be better off out of each others faces." Spike's tone was calm but he spoke again before there was time to draw breath. "And it's nothing to do with her, or the paper." He felt almost glad Spike still cared enough to lie to him. The tiredness, the age was sweeping over him and Spike, who had clearly been expecting the full fireworks of a knock-down drag-out fight looked almost disappointed. Maybe that was how he had planned to justify his leaving.

"Just be careful James." He so rarely used his given name and he knew Spike hated it when he did. Sometimes when he was a child it had been the only way to make a point.

"Spike, Dad." He said automatically.

"I know. Be careful James." Spike looked at him but said nothing; instead he reached down and picked up his bags.

"I've got a plane to catch." He said simply.

He watched him leave with dry eyes, then turned and returned to his office, eyes scanning the pictures around the room. He felt old and vaguely helpless, sat in his chair he watched the clock until he was sure Spike must be over the Atlantic.

The phone rang rarely these days. By a silent mutual agreement he and Spike only in emergencies. As much as possible he left him alone to his life, whatever his life might now be. He still received copies of the paper in the mail, still hung on to his son's front pages with a grim determination to be a proud parent even if he was not a good one. That afternoon he had called Spike on some flimsy pretext, suddenly desperate to hear his voice. He had heard plenty of it as it turned out, they had spent a good forty minutes yelling at each other. Katherine leaving, moving away from the States, moving back again, it swung between the things they blamed each other for, rooted in the basic fear they both shared that they had done something to drive Spike's mother away. Unable to blame themselves they blamed each other, Spike argued that he had never cared, had worried more about himself than his son. He hit back that Spike had never given him an inch, never helped, never made a mature decision in his life. Spike told him he would have been happier without him, he told Spike that it cut both ways. In the end Spike slammed down the phone and in the echo from six thousand miles away he felt ancient and defeated. When picking fights with your only offspring became a major part of your routine it was probably time to worry. He sighed and sank back into his office chair, swinging idly this way and that. He looked at the clock and realised it was late in England, the middle of the night almost. Spike had treated him specially by staying up so late just to fight. His hand reached for the phone but he pulled back and stared at the ceiling. He would leave it until tomorrow, give them both time to cool off. The tide was coming in and he could hear the soothing rhythm of the waves breaking against the shore outside his window. Tomorrow, it would seem better in the morning. He closed his eyes, leaning the chair back and rocking it gently, shifting the still air. Twenty-one years of fighting meant one more day couldn't hurt he reasoned, especially when he felt too weary to even reach towards the phone. Instead he settled more comfortably in the chair and began to drift off to sleep, the tiredness washing out of him and being replaced with a warm sense of contentment. In his last coherent thought, he realised that the sounds from outside had somehow diminished, replaced with an internal rhythm. He smiled; he could hear the ocean in his head.


End file.
